Dec 10, 2013

Vote for Me

If I ever run for public office, it will be on a single issue: improvement and standardization of women's public restrooms. I am sick and tired of waving my hands all around a faucet, waiting for water to emerge, only to see there is a knob that should be turned; banging on a soap dispenser that is waiting for me to hold my hand under the shoot; and feeling up the paper towel dispenser until I finally give up and dry my hands on my pants. Sometimes I start to look around for the hidden camera because I think I must be getting punked.

If I am elected, all women's restrooms will have a hook on the inside of each stall door. That hook will be large enough to hold a purse strap and a coat collar so I do not have to swing my purse onto my back, crunch my coat up around my boobs, and hold everything in place while I pull down my pants and lower precariously onto the toilet. Invariably, my purse succumbs to gravity and falls onto the floor, right between the toilet base and the receptacle for 'sanitary' products. When that happens, I just want to leave my purse where it landed and walk away.

All toilet stalls will have a fresh supply of seat covers, and manufacturers of said covers will figure out a new way to package them so the first few don't shred to pieces or come out in a clump that a woman before me has crammed back in the container.

Toilet paper. It doesn't have to be two-ply. I know that's expensive. But the stuff they're using now doesn't even merit being called one-ply. This stuff is more like half-ply or no-ply. In fact, this is what takes us so long in the bathroom: extracting microscopic bits of toilet paper, one after the other, until we finally have a handful. That process can take up to an hour and by then we have to pee again.

All toilets will be manual flush! This is a nonnegotiable piece of my platform. I am fed up with toilets that flush while I'm still unzipping my pants, flush again while I'm doing my business and a third time while I'm trying to get my clothes reassembled, still holding my purse and coat because there was no goddamn hook.

All public restrooms will have a well paid attendant who cleans and restocks about once an hour and isn't one of those who sit around next to a bowl of rosewater and a tip jar and thanks you for coming.

All women's bathrooms will have enough stalls to handle the traffic or else the men's bathrooms will be relabeled unisex for overflow. If an establishment is small, like a restaurant, but large enough to have two little water closets, and chooses to label them both unisex, they will be severely reprimanded. One will be for women only, the other unisex. If I can hold it (which, I admit, is unlikely), I'll wait for the women's room because it will be cleaner and the seat will be down.

All women's rooms will have a mirror bright enough to check for spinach in my teeth.

And finally, all stalls will have functioning locks, because there is nothing worse than getting bonked in the head while you're sitting on the toilet, holding all your belongings off the floor, and leaning forward to press the door closed each time it swings open, when some other poor woman tries to enter your stall.